ALABAMA ATTEMPTS TO STAND STILL

by Jay Sizemore

Alabama is also on the front lines of what some see as the modern-day successor to the civil rights movement. Although a federal court threw out the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Alabama’s Supreme Court has tried to block the issuance of marriage certificates. Mr. Obama made several references to gay rights but did not directly address the fight over marriage in Alabama. --Peter Baker and Richard Fausset, The New York Times, March 7, 2015; photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

in a hurricane of rose petals,
in a landslide, where every granule of dirt
is a body clamoring for air:
roll tide, roll.

There’s something holy about crimson,
the color of blood,
the color of a wound left open
like a gash between the ribs
where wind can be heard
whistling
through a punctured lung,
gasps of breath lost
out the knothole of a hollowed oak,
felled when the roots began to die.

Remember the F-5 that tore through Birmingham,
digging a trench a mile wide,
scrubbing houses clean of their foundations.
Remember the hopelessness of the sundogs,
shimmering in the wake
of Death’s coattails
like pearl buttons on a burial suit.
Remember the sounds of rubble
lifted from the cellar door,
the way the world smelled
like a dirty palm pressed over a mouth.

Whose hand reached down
through that rectangle of light,
that swirl of dust and dripping rain,
to pull you free of the cobwebs,
into cacophony and conflicted weather vanes?
If that hand had held
the penis of his lover
just hours before the storm,
would you have refused to be saved?
If Jesus Christ put on fishnet stockings
after the sermon on the mount,
and let Peter call him bitch,
would his words cease to inspire you?

Alabama attempts to stand still
with both feet on a fault line,
shaking its fists like gavels
to pound illumination
out of the stars,
insisting that every kiss
be given with the eyes closed,
no tongue. Leave the lamp on,
so you can see yourself
drowning in the gulf. .

Roll tide, roll.


Jay Sizemore brought the high-five out of retirement. He still sings Ryan Adams songs in the shower. Sometimes, he massages his wife's feet. His work has appeared online and in print with magazines such as Rattle, Prick of the Spindle, Revolution John, Menacing Hedge, and Still: The Journal. He's never won an award. Currently, he lives in Nashville, TN, home of the death of modern music. His chapbook Father Figures is available on Amazon.

RADICALIZED

by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

Image source: RCOG Globeal Network International Women’s Day Page

The main thing was, she
listened. A
cliché.

So we told her
everything: how we cared

how we couldn’t
stand

watching all the news, how sad we felt.

She said we’re right. We told her
more: little

slips like pretty dolls
with long loose hair

laid on their backs –

here: the teacher
who won’t look
at us

my mother’s glass of brandy
every night,
her soft red cheeks.

She said the answer and it was
the one we wanted.

On the big plane
looking down
at the dark world we held

our coats wrapped tight
as love

around our ribs. The future waited like a bear,
still asleep.


Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her poems have appeared in Word Riot, Hobart, decomP, The Tule Review, and Right Hand Pointing, among others.

TERRORISM AND ITS MODES

by Austin Alexis

I compare it to a wintry night:
kale and other crops won't grow:
its land sits barren, dry.
It is defined by lies.
The bodies and shards it scatters
disintegrate in The New York Times.
Its causes it fails to justify
so its effects lack resonance.
By definition it is a cry
whose message, unheard, belies
what it wants to say.
Unpersuasive, it never asks why
its arguments don't make loud sounds
like shopping malls crashing to the ground.


Austin Alexis has published in or has work forthcoming in The Long Islander, Home Planet News, Paterson Literary Review, The New Verse News, The Ledge and other journals. His full-length collection is Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press). His chapbook is For Lincoln & Other Poems (Poets Wear Prada Press). He teaches composition and literature at a CUNY college in Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan, New York City.

GROUND SUPPORT

by Allison Berry

After Joan Mitchell’s "Little Trip" 1969

In my bed, she explains how her arms
have hardened without her rifle. Her fingers and thumbs
homesick for a place no one ever intended
she call home. Home is pelts strung to drip
from guttering, her sisters
backsplashed by wood paneling,
their voices reaching the back porch as a melody.
No detail of sand or mission will ever make Iraq home
for me. Today, the president asked congress
for authorization, for ground forces.
I’m already homesick for her breasts.
I explain how my chest will empty, how the red pulse
will turn and drip. Congress goes on considering.
I take all her longing as a command.


Editor's Note: The proposed legislation Mr. Obama sent to Capitol Hill would impose a three-year limit on American action that has been conducted largely from the air and, while allowing Special Operations commandos and other limited missions, would rule out sustained, large-scale ground combat. It would also finally repeal the expansive 2002 congressional measure that authorized President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. --New York Times, February 11, 2015


Allison Berry is working on her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte and is a Lecturer for the Women's Studies department at Pittsburg State University and the English department at Missouri Southern State University. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in such journals as The Minnesota Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Green Hills Literary Lantern. She is also a contributor to the anthologies To The Stars, Through Difficulties and Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems. She lives in Joplin, Missouri, with her two children.

COURTING

by Gil Hoy

Should a black man
in America

love his country?

She should be
lovely to be loved,

not my country
right or wrong.

Only White Men
wrote the constitution with
their rich quill pens

from imperial England,
and white fruits flourished

atop Broken Black Backs,
Flagellation and snapped
roped necks.

America elected a President
of all colors, perhaps Her
finest hour,

But the slave's legacy
in America is still
one of subjugation---

So an NAACP office
is bombed, white
cops kill black boys

NYC mayor warns son
"be wary", whips

speak to supremacists,
and a homeless black man

named Africa
should be careful
where he reaches.


Gil Hoy is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.  He is a Boston trial lawyer and studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction in February of last year.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in The Potomac, The Zodiac Review, Harbinger Asylum and Earl of Plaid Literary Journal.

BIBI BLUSTERS

by Charles Frederickson





I scream for eye cream
Bibi risking US – Israeli relations
On partisan politics dangerously revolting
Insulting Ugly American mental floss

Vainella unilateral Bibi sitter bluster
Insolence impudence impertinence arrogance dance
Butter toasted butt-out pee-can
Stinging cheeky slap in faceoff

While Obama opposed invasion costing
Trillion greenbacks thousands of lives
Creating geopolitical ballyhooed wink debacle
Bibi championed Iraqi Road invasion

Washington DCeit caramel knowledge poisonalities
Cabana Oreo banana Obama split
Cheery cherry Kerry no-go-tiation pits
Caramel kvetch chutzpah Nutty-Yahoo

Imagine Whirled Peace froZEN meltdown
Never too shockolate yo-yogurt
Game of cones no surebert
Why can’t we be friends


Dr. Charles Frederickson has been a regular contributor to The New Verse News since 2006.

TWO ROADS

by Judith Terzi

“You don’t have to read Robert Frost to know. You have to live life to know that the difficult path is usually the one less traveled, but it will make all the difference for the future of my country, the security of the Middle East and the peace of the world, the peace, we all desire.” --Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United States Congress, March 3, 2015

after Robert Frost

Two roads diverged on a snowy morning
on Congress' floor. The travelers could not
journey together along each path, one trodden
with storm of angst & warrior remains.
The other looked about the same, but hope
was sprinkled along the edges of the trail,
& sunlight could be seen streaming through
the fabric of oak & pine & fir. The travelers
listened to the vibes of each path, cupped
seasoned hands to ears to hear the trials
of trees, the brag of wind, the bend of earth.
Now some preferred the leitmotif that emerged
from one––a lighter tune they heard, say
a Mozart flute. They chose that road, skipped
stones into a mountain lake, while Spanish
broom stretched yellow necks toward
rain-swept sky. And two hummingbirds
tangoed overhead as if to say: "You've taken
this road, & it will make all the difference."


Judith Terzi is a poet and educator living in Southern California. She is the author of Sharing Tabouli, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, and most recently, If You Spot Your Brother Floating By (Kattywompus). Her poems appear widely in online and print journals and are included in anthologies such as Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's (Barefoot Muse), Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes), and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque). 

ONLY IN MY ROOM, NOT IN GAZA

by Catherine Wald

“Everything is beautiful in my room, but only in my room, not in Gaza.” --Nidaa Badwan quoted by Jodi Rudoren in The New York Times February 28, 2015

Call me radical, you who uphold
hegemony of the hothead; call me
artist when I find beauty on the
inside, where it’s supposed to
have been stamped out; call
me traditionalist, locked away in
my own self-inflicted zenana.

Here, no one will beat me or throw
stones after me.  Here, I can forget about
which missile coming from which side
may explode my face. Here, I have
rediscovered what safety feels like.
Look carefully: let me remind you, too.

This is the only way I know to honor
perfection of nests and eggs and those
fledglings straining at the windows who
will have to learn to fly inside their heads
like I have, like we all have, in this ageless
conga line of barefoot women on hot sands.

Here, when I am punched in the gut, it’s by sunlight
or soul; colors or ideas. Freedom, I call this freedom.
No need to send for a doctor. This is how I heal.

Some day I would like to fit the whole world into this room.

Catherine Wald's books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly and Westchester Review.

CONTEXT

by George Held

Barbarians come and go

with history's ebb and flow.

IS are the new iconoclasts

in a long line of enthusiasts.

Remember the Alexandria library

built by the pharoah Ptolemy?

Among those who burned it

was a pope of the Coptic

persuasion, 300 years

after Julius Caesar's

arson there. So remember,

while some wait for the barbarians,

others welcome them with honor

and others react with horror.

History's all about context:
burnt books precede new texts.

George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

GOING TO CLASS BEFORE EVERYTHING CHANGES

by Anuja Ghimire

Two teenage Nepalese schoolgirls suffered burn injuries after a boy hurled acid at them early Sunday, police said. The girls, aged 15 and 16, were admitted to a hospital with burn injuries after the youth attacked them with a bottle of acid. The two were sitting in class at a coaching centre in Kathmandu waiting for other students when the attack occurred. "A masked boy came into the room and threw acid at them," senior police officer Narayan Khadka told AFP. Khadka said an investigation was underway to find the attacker, and added that his motive had not yet been established. Acid attacks, which disfigure and often blind their overwhelmingly female victims, are often a form of revenge in South Asia linked to dowry, land disputes or refusal to a man's advances. Although acid attacks are now a criminal offence in neighbouring India, there are no specific laws addressing it in Nepal.  --Yahoo! News, February 22, 2015; Kathmandu Post photo by NARENDRA SHRESTHA & Nimesh Jang rai

To stick
a little round ball
of chewed gum under the desk
And spread notebooks
over the two initials and the arrow
Carved with a ball point pen,
shielded with a heart
Your mouth
buried in a friend’s ear
The latest
on the boy who smiled
 in the hallway,
again
The crumpled yellow paper
wet with your sweat
Because words
only spoken
are too soon
forgotten

To relearn
Pythagorean theorem,
though you don’t understand
why
You wear
the red sweater
 your mother hand washed
-- It should last another year --
And the white shirt
your father ironed
So the collar is creased
just right
Because rules
followed
unlock
happy tomorrows

To pull out
the new protractor
your brother bought
The last one
chipped and broke
into three uneven bits
You measure
the angles of triangles,
your duty
And sit
with dreams
folded in your pockets
Before the unguarded door
opens
letting in
the rushed steps
Because you
are beautiful,
but you have
to become someone


Anuja Ghimire is from Kathmandu. Her poetry is published in Riverlit, Glass, Clay, Ishaan Literary Review, Zest, Right Hand Pointing, Stone Path Review, Constellations, and others. She lives in Dallas. 

APPROACHING CERES

by Geoffrey A. Landis

This image was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft of dwarf planet Ceres on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers). It shows that the brightest spot on Ceres has a dimmer companion, which apparently lies in the same basin. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

dimpled spinning ball
ice in bottoms of craters
glints bright in sunlight


Geoffrey A. Landis is a scientist, a science fiction writer, and a poet. As a scientist, he works at NASA John Glenn Research Center on developing new technology for space.  As a science fiction writer, he's written one novel and over fifty short stories, winning the Hugo and Nebula awards. As a poet, he has written numerous poems, including this one.

FOR LEONARD NIMOY

by William Cullen Jr.





On the day Spock died
some thought the world
became a better place
freed of one less voice of reason
the elemental powers rejoiced
but the Id of the universe
did not take part
knowing eternity’s too long a time
to wait for another
sparring partner.


William Cullen Jr. is a veteran and works at a non-profit in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in Canary, Gulf Stream, Right Hand Pointing, Spillway, Word Riot and Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics.

AMERICAN LOVE STORY

by Chris O’Carroll

Rudy Giuliani Is Now Trump, Minus the Hair. 

--Frank Rich, New York Magazine, February 25, 2015

“Barack Obama doesn’t love me!” Giuliani cries.
“Rudy, chill.  Nobody does,” the whole wide world replies.

But then Hizzoner takes it up a notch: “He doesn’t love
America, which is the country he’s the POTUS of.

“I know he doesn’t love this nation.  If he did, he’d say
That Islam’s always evil, and so’s marriage if you’re gay.

“He’d say that workers shouldn’t have the right to unionize.
Protecting the environment is something he’d despise.

“Of birth control and women’s right to choose he would be scornful,
And when black guys get killed by cops, he wouldn’t be so mournful.

“He’d shut up about plans to keep the poor insured and healthy,
And dedicate himself to lower taxes for the wealthy.

“He’d say non-Christians aren’t protected by the Constitution,
And there’s no evidence for climate change or evolution.

“From Fox News he would take his cues about what’s patriotic.
As you can see, I’m not irrelevant or idiotic.”


Chris O’Carroll has published a number of poems in The New Verse News.  Some Americans love his work.  Others, not so much.

SELF-MADE MAN

by Tom Russell

I gave birth to myself.

I discovered fire so that I could eat
whatever I, alone, produced.

I didn’t read your books,
you read mine.

I coined all the phrases.

I invented the wheel
and built all the roads
that wheels carry my money on.

I did all this with no help from anyone.

I created the dial tones and cyberspace
and made all the deals.

I forged all my own tools,
and that includes you.

Now you want to abuse me
with your regulations and taxations.
Blathering about responsibility
and shared sacrifice.

Suck it up, weasels.
Next you’ll be wanting your own bootstraps.

I don’t care who among you
gets sick or dies.
It pleases me
to see the spite you have for each other.

You are blind and weak.
Even if you could see my curtain
you wouldn’t be able to move it
and know that I am there.


Tom Russell works for the Omaha Public Library in Omaha, Nebraska. His poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Shot Glass Journal, and Crab Fat Literary Magazine.